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Beginning with
Buddy Holly
in 1959, many of the first Hall of Fame inductees had already passed by
the time this website was launched in 2000, and the great Ray Charles
died in 2004, but beginning in 2014, we have
memorialized all of them
upon their passings in our
Class
Newsletter,
 .
Those memorial tributes are repeated below in chronological
order.
Along with the few rock 'n' roll icons who passed before them,
principally
Buddy Holly
(in 1959),
Bill Haley (in
1981) and, of course, Elvis Presley (in 1977), and countless
others who emulated them during the time of our youth, collectively, these
giants gave our generation the greatest group gift of our lifetime
our
music!
Yes, they are all
gone now, but we still remember, and as someone said almost three
decades after they gave us this great gift, "the heart of rock and
roll is still beatin'" and it
will not be silenced!
A reaction to this page from a friend:
"The music of these giants flavored our lives from
jr. high on. The
romances we all experienced were played out to their tunes. Love and
heartbreak were the fuel of our teenage lives for which we will
always be grateful. Any one of
their tunes brings up memories both happy and sad
always wonderful!"
Keith Bearman (formerly Polsley),
Oceanside High School, Class of 1962
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My heartfelt thanks to these legends for such
wonderful memories.
See more about the
Everly Brothers below under "BYE, BYE, DON!
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LegendARY
ROCK 'N' ROLL PIONEER, CHUCK BERRY, DEAD AT 90!!
March 18, 2017:
It
is with deep sadness that we report the death,
at age 90, of one of the most
 significant
rock 'n' roll
pioneers of the 1950s, the first singer-songwriter and one of the greatest lyricists
and guitar virtuosos of all time,
inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in
its inaugural class in 1986,
and a hero to our generation the one and only Chuck Berry.
In December 2000,
the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts gave the now late Chuck Berry, one
our generation's heroes, the highest honor that can be bestowed
upon an entertainer in the USA. We
invite you to focus on his remarkable contribution to
our generational culture by revisiting our
Chuck Berry Kennedy Center Honors page created in 2000 (when
this site was still fresh and new) upon the occasion of his
receipt of the coveted honor. That page features a
link to a video of the event.
Following Berry's
passing, several famous
successor musicians paid tribute to Berry in a 2020 PBS documentary entitled "Chuck
Berry: Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," for example:
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"One of my big lights has gone
out." ―
Keith
Richards
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"Your music is engraved inside us
forever." ―
Mick
Jagger
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"Thank you for the poetry, the passion and the potency." ―
Keith
Urban
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"None of us would be here without you." ―
Lenny
Kravitz
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"All of us in rock have now lost our father."
―
Alice
Cooper
And
President Obama said, "We'll miss
you, Chuck, be good."
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In 1977, Chuck
was honored by the selection of "Johnny B. Goode" by a NASA committee headed
by Carl Sagan as the only recording of a contemporary popular song to be
included and immortalized on the Voyager spacecraft, now many billions of
miles from Earth and traveling at 38,000 mph waiting to be discovered by
some alien life form. A 2017 CBS News report quipped, "Rock
and roll may never die."
* * * * * *
John Lennon once said, "If
you would try to give rock 'n' roll another name, you might call it Chuck
Berry." So began a movie documentary tribute to Chuck Berry in
celebration of his 60th birthday
entitled Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll
that was released in 1987. It featured a number of brief interviews of other
rock 'n' roll
giants in commenting about their admiration for
him. A couple of notable examples follow:
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According to the internet music streaming service, Pandora
Radio, (no specific author credit given):
"Of
all the early breakthrough rock & roll artists, none is more
important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He
is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental
voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest
performers. Quite simply, without him there would be no Beatles, Rolling
Stones, Beach
Boys, Bob
Dylan,
nor a myriad others. There would be no standard 'Chuck Berry
guitar intro,' the instrument's clarion call to get the joint rockin' in any setting. The clippety-clop rhythms of rockabilly
would not have been mainstreamed into the now standard 4/4 rock
& roll beat. There would be no obsessive wordplay by modern-day
tunesmiths; in fact, the whole history (and artistic level) of
rock & roll songwriting would have been much poorer without him.
Like Brian
Wilson said,
he wrote
'all of the great songs and came up with all the rock &
roll beats.' Those who do not claim him as a seminal influence
or profess a liking for his music and showmanship show their
ignorance of rock's development as well as his place as the
music's first great creator. Elvis may
have fueled rock & roll's imagery, but Chuck Berry was its
heartbeat and original mindset."
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On
October 18, 2016, Chuck Berry turned 90
years of age,
and sadly he left us six months later.
He brought us all so much joy and now
he is gone. But he left so much for
us to treasure and remember him by.
The Class of
1960 offers its sincere thanks to you, Chuck Berry. We are deeply grateful to
you for helping to make
our teenage years so very special
―
and
for entertaining us and keeping us rocking
―
yes,
and keeping us young
―
since 1955!
Chuck, you were the man
Ύ
the undisputed
grand old man of
rock 'n' roll!!
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FATS DOMINO GONE AT 89!
October 24, 2017:
Sadly, we must announce that Antoine "Fats" Domino,
another one of
the legendary pioneers of
our music,
died today at age 89.
Ain't that
a shame!
 Second only to Elvis Presley in record sales in
the 1950s, this humble, gentle, gracious and talented
man with only a fourth grade education left a musical legacy
to our generation and those that have or will come later,
whose value is clearly immea-surable and that will never be
forgotten. He was
inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in its inaugural
class in 1986.
According to
Rolling Stone's comprehensive, online memorial
tribute to Fats
(which is among the best of the many
you will find online and the source of much of the content
of this one),
"Few
artists embodied the innocent release and ecstasy of early
rock 'n' roll like Fats
Domino.
He was the music's first piano wizard and a huge influence
on generations of musicians."
The rolling motion of his body one observed whenever he
performed, coupled with the distinctively rolling rhythms of
his New Orleans style of music, truly put the "roll" in
rock 'n' roll more than anyone else. Dion DiMucci (of Dion & the
Belmonts) spoke of the "rolling
sound of his fingers on the piano."
During his 1999 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction speech,
Billy Joel said of Fats,
"Traditionally,
when people think of rock 'n' roll, they think of the
guitar. I want to thank the man who proved that the piano
was a rock 'n' roll instrument."
And in the words of contemporary piano greats of Fats' time (and
ours), Jerry Lee Lewis said,
"His
vocals were phenomenal, and he was a great pianist
— he had the best raw
talent."
Little
Richard said,
"I
loved him. I loved his piano playing. I love his music,
period.
...
he could make a piano talk ... he influenced me as an entertainer, period."
In a
1956 television interview,
Fats Domino
was asked about the controversy that had developed around
rock 'n' roll
music. "As far as I know,"
he said,
"the music makes
people happy." It
certainly did that for us. And over 60 years later, it still
does
—
and always will as long as we live.
So as Fats takes his last walk to join
Chuck
Berry, Elvis and the others waiting in
rock 'n' roll
heaven, we say to him, "You turn to the right; you find a
little bright light."
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LITTLE RICHARD DEAD
AT 87!
May
9,
2020:
Slightly more or less than three years after the passings of
two other giants,
Chuck Berry
and
Fats
Domino
(respectively, on March 18th and October 24th, 2017), Little
Richard, the last of the three legendary founding fathers
most responsible for transforming black R&B music into
mainstream
rock 'n' roll (our
music)
passed away from bone cancer at his home near
Nashville, Tennessee, at age 87.
Just as the Everlys
defined and represented the boundary of the soft, sweet
romantic side of
rock 'n' roll,
Richard regularly raised the roof and reached the outer
limits of the raw and raucous edge of the wide range of
sounds and styles presented to us as kids during its
explosive first five years or so.
There
 are many extensive
online accounts of Richard's colorful life and his long,
extraordinary career in the revolutionary musical genre he
virtually defined. In the words of a NY Times
reporter, "screaming
as if for his very life, he created something new, thrilling
and dangerous."
These online biographical
accounts feature the grateful tributes of countless younger artists
who followed him. Many of them were heavily influenced,
indeed, by Richard for decades, but neither his sound nor
his style of performing was ever quite duplicated. He was
unique. And not many among our generation can easily
forget the shocking feeling of raw and rhythmic, sensual
exhilaration that came over us in 1955, when our radios
first exploded with
"Wop Bop a Loo Bomp, a Lop
Bop Bomp!!"
R.I.P.,
Richard.
BYE, BYE, DON!
 August 21, 2021: One of the last surviving
rock 'n' roll pioneers and musical heroes of our generation is gone
at age 84, 6⅟2
years after his younger brother, Phil in 2014. (See
2014 memorial
tribute to Phil, above.) It all goes for both of them;
they were a team, and as such, they were charter inductees into the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame in 1986.
The sweet sound of Everly Brothers
harmonies will never be
forgotten ─ and it will never be duplicated. They were
indisputably among the finest and most memorable duos in
rock 'n' roll.
May the brothers rest in peace together in
rock 'n' roll
heaven. So sad.
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Jerry Lee Lewis (the "Killer") is dead at
87!
October 28, 2022:
Once again, it saddens me greatly to report the
passing today of my very favorite musical entertainer of all
time, Jerry Lee Lewis, whom we lovingly called the "Killer."
Two
days after a premature and erroneous report of his
death followed almost immediately by an unprecedented number
of media corrections announcing that "the Killer is
ALIVE!," he finally succumbed to his poor health
today at his home near Memphis. His personal life and career
were filled with controversy and scandal, irreverence and turmoil.
 Known
primarily for his incredible and unique, self-taught piano
playing, his unbelievable energy, sensuality, showmanship
and his enormous ego, the Killer, who never learned how to
read music, nevertheless was one of the greatest musicians
of our time. He was the very definition of everything that
was
rock 'n' roll
our music.
No adjectives such as outrageous, iconic or legendary were strong
enough to adequately describe him. He even played the piano
with his feet and with his ass.
Back in 1957, when I first heard "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin'
On," I thought no one would ever top that. But soon
afterwards, along came "Great Balls of Fire," which totally
blew me away! In my opinion, it remains to this day the
greatest
rock 'n' roll record ever made!
The last time I saw Jerry Lee perform in person, he was in
his late 70s. He was wearing a back brace and could barely
step up to the piano. But when his magical fingers hit the
keyboard, they were 21 years old and electrifying!
He definitely was one of a kind. There will never be
another.
Equally talented and comfortable with all kinds of music
other than rock 'n' roll, such as R&B, blues, gospel, pop
and country, at long last, just before his death
he was finally honored with his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Decades previously, in
1986, he was, of course, among the inaugural class of inductees into the
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,
all of whose members
are sadly now gone. As he often prophetically proclaimed himself
in recent years, the
Killer eventually was, in fact, "the
last man standing"!
There are many extensive biographical obituaries and
celebrity tributes to this remarkable entertainer online.
One of the best appeared three days after his death and was
written by
Cameron B. Gunnoe
in a rather obscure online music newsletter,
CultureSonar.
Among
other things, it says:
"To
undertake the delineation of Jerry Lee Lewis influence on
popular music as it is known today would be akin to
explaining the impact of the internal combustion engine as
it pertains to large-scale commerce. There is simply so much
to unpack that words cease to do justice to the notion."
There are
also
many hours of JLL's performances over the last 66
years online, for example, on YouTube, many of which are of
the Killer's unique versions of other people's music of many
types, including many songs you've never heard before, for
example, this 1983 star-studded TV salute to the Killer
hosted by the now late
Dick
Clark online at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tOUwcowqjc. But they are
all
wonderful!
Google them, and set aside some
time to watch, listen and, of course, enjoy.
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